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This Site And Others Are Going To Keep Hammering Back At Those Who Lie About Our Club

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Early last night, I got an email from a friend of mine, drawing my attention to some … negativity that’s flying about over the article I posted on Glasgow Live’s piece on Dembele. My first reaction to that was to say nothing; negativity is part of this job, and I deal with it every single day. I also deal with grief that would have a lot of people hiding under the bed, and do it under my own name. Let no-one ever accuse me of hiding behind pseudonyms.

Others do exactly the same; amongst them, the outstanding team at CQN, Joe over at VideoCelts, Phil, Angela Haggerty, Paul Larkin and more. The hassle we sometimes get for it is unreal. The disruption in our normal lives is profound.

But all of it is worth it.

Because of Celtic.

Our support is made up of various strands. Some of them would rather we didn’t draw further attention to news stories and reporters who make stuff up, who attack us, who stir the sectarian soup. These people think it’s not worth the effort and only puts that stuff in front of a wider audience. Others think we are being unfair to certain people in the media; we’re not. We give credit where it’s due and condemn where that’s appropriate.

We get the same back. As I said, it’s part of the gig.

And then there are others, who cultivate friends amongst our enemies. Some of them stand up for the poor, down on their luck hacks who inhabit our newsrooms, who claim to believe that these folks are just doing their jobs. I agree with them on that. They are just doing their jobs. It’s just a pity that for some of them those jobs involve destabilising us, spreading disinformation about us, sowing division amongst us and other such things, many of them with a PR lead.

We don’t mind the people who want to get in good with the media either; we understand their motivations, after all.

They want their own media gigs, their own careers in the MSM.

There’s nothing wrong with that, even if they do it from the standpoint of being Celtic fans.

Ambition is good. It’s positive. It’s not something anyone would ever knock.

But speaking for myself, I happen to think you cannot be in the service of two masters.

I think the nature of the Scottish media is such that only a handful can maintain their professional and personal integrity from within it.

Like the hassle that accrues to this job, when you decide to serve those particular outlets you do so knowing you leave your objectivity, and even some of your soul, at the door. There isn’t a newspaper in the land which doesn’t have an “editorial position”, a political “line to take” and the sports sections, whose heads know their readers as well as anyone, are no exception to that rule. You cannot be in that position and not know what it costs you.

The ads on this site and elsewhere get a lot of criticism from people who should know better. They might be intrusive and annoying but those ads are what enable guys like me, like Joe, like the CQN guys, to write day after day on subjects which no-one else would touch.

They allow us to hammer punch back at anyone who slanders or club or our support, all day, every day.

Those ads, quite literally, are what makes us truly independent because as long as they are there no-one will ever be able to impose an “editorial line” on our work.

They also allow us to do this without asking for subscriptions; anyone who claims we’ve ever done that is a liar.

Our sites are free and always will be.

On top of that, we are all great and enthusiastic supporters of all the many Celtic blogs and outlets there are out there.

The number of independent Celtic sites is enormous; some of them, like that run by Steven McNamara, are just gaining a well-deserved reputation. Others, like The Clumpany, are already famous (or notorious!) and many of us often work together on articles and campaigns. We promote each other’s work. We support what the other sites do and it will be a cold day in Hell before any of us write a negative thing about a fellow Celtic fan’s work.

This is a Family, and we serve that Family first and foremost.

Part of serving this Family is standing up for it. Nobody asks us to, and nobody tells us to. We don’t claim to speak for all of it, because this is a broad church and one that reflects every strand of opinion, but we will fight the fight on behalf of all of it come what may.

We don’t ask for, or want, a subservient, crawling, grovelling media which prints, without question, every word the Celtic directors utter. We want one that affords us proper scrutiny, because that’s how it is supposed to work, and for the rest of the time simply writes the truth. What we have in Scotland is pretty damned far from that. And as long as they lie about us, and smear or, or try to discredit us, sites like this will be here.

There may be “honest pros” out there. There are definitely dishonest ones.

There was a time when click-bait nonsense like that Dembele story last night could go unchallenged. A half dozen other sites were already spreading that shady tale all over the internet; I make no apology whatsoever for offering an alternative view.

When the media does what they do, we will do what we do; it’s as simple as that.

We have enough faith in our readers that they can decide for themselves who’s right and who’s wrong, who’s got an agenda and who’s simply trying to make trouble for its own sake. In the end, that’s what it’s all about for us.

We never asked the rest of this Family to put their faith or their trust in us; we put our faith and trust in them.

And as long as our club is attacked, we’ll be here to defend it, whoever’s holding the stick, whoever stands in our way.

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